Today’s tip, as most of these prime numbered tips, comes from something that was a default years ago that I stuck with.

Put your build output in an edit window.

Most programmer’s editors or IDE’s relegate the output from a build to some sort of tool window that is typically in a tab group docked a the bottom. This is how SlickEdit works by default, because it is what is expected today. Sometimes you have to jump off the bridge because all of your competitors did. But that doesn’t mean that is the most powerful way to work.

Try right clicking in the Build tab and selecting “Send Compile Output to Editor Window”. This means the build window (what we call the the “concurrent process buffer” or simply “process buffer”) is in the ring of open files when you cycle through them using the next-buffer/prev-buffer commands, or pick one from the Files tool window. This is actually very powerful. At first it may seem that you can’t move freely, but you can. The cursor-up key will cycle through the command history by default, but clicking the mouse or using a non-cursor key to move (page-up for example) will allow you to move freely through the output, or delete it by hand. I find this much more useful than trying to view my output through a porthole. Try it out and let me know what you think. You can always turn this off by right clicking in the Build tab (or the process buffer) and turning off “Send Compile Output to Editor Window”.